This blog was written before Pardot was renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You can read more about the name change and what it means here.
One of the biggest questions we receive from clients regarding the Google Analytics native connector in Pardot is, Why are we noticing discrepancies between Google Analytics data and the pre-built reports in Pardot?’. If you are using Google Analytics and Pardot, you may be asking yourself the very same thing. Which do you believe, Pardot vs Google Analytics?
As this is such a frequently asked question, here are a few explanations for why it's unlikely that the two reporting tools will ever show the exact same data, and how we can use the B2B Marketing Analytics App to combine the two tools for more accurate reporting.
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Pardot vs. Google Analytics:
Why is my data different?
What does each report show?
What data is sent to Pardot from Google Analytics?
Recommended solution
Connection settings
Advanced object properties
Google Analytics Connector considerations
Reason 1: Data Processing
One reason your reports might show discrepancies is because of the way the different reporting tools process data.
For example, Pardot defines a session (view) as the moment in which a page loads, whilst Google Analytics will only count a session once the GA global site tag (a small piece of Javascript code) has had ecuador phone number time to load and fire.
As an example, let’s say that a site visitor exits a landing page or navigates to another tab before the page has had time to load. In this instance, you will notice that the visit will be counted as a session in Pardot, but not in Google Analytics since the GA global tag never got a chance to execute.
Reason 2: Clicks record instantly, page loads don't
Ad-side reporting tools such as Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter and Pardot collect data from the moment a click is registered. However, site-side analytics are only collected once the page loads.
Just as with the above example about GA global tags, you can already see where this could cause some issues in the reports when viewing them side-by-side; ad-side reports will show more users because clicks are instant, whereas page loads can be interrupted or abandoned.
You can pretty much assume that the numbers in your ad-side reports will always be slightly higher than your site-side reports for this reason, especially if your site has slow page loading times.
Reason 3: Same name, different metric
Just because two different reporting platform